This invention relates to a method of recording video and sound information in a field such as a street, a festival or a concert hall and reproducing the recorded information in another place and, more particularly, to a method which facilitates synchronization of picture and sound thereby yielding a vivid and faithful re-creation of an original recorded space.
For ease of discussion, the terms "original space" and "original recorded space" will be used to refer to a space in which video and sound information are recorded. The term "reproduction space" refers to a space in which the video and sound information recorded in an original space are to be reproduced. Also, "video" is used interchangeably with "picture", and "audio" is used interchangeably with "sound."
Prior art video systems for reproducing video information in a space such as a street, a festival or a concert hall, there have been known a dome type video system as shown in FIG. 2 and a cylindrical type video system as shown in FIG. 3. In the dome type image system, a screen is formed over the entire inner surface of a dome-like reproduction space 10 such as a planetarium, pictures of the original space are recorded upon dividing the original space in plural sections, and pictures of the upper hemisphere of the original space are reproduced by projecting the pictures recorded in the respective sections of the original space by plural projectors situated in a central portion or peripheral places of the reproduction space 10 towards corresponding sections of the screen. In the cylindrical video system, a screen is formed over the entire cylindrical inner wall surface of a reproduction space 12, pictures of the original space are recorded upon dividing the original space in several sections, and pictures of the entire horizontal periphery of the original space are reproduced by projecting the pictures recorded in the respective sections of the original space by plural projectors situated in a central portion of the reproduction space 12 towards corresponding sections of the screen.
The sound system which has been used with these video systems is such that sound information collected by using a suitable system such as a stereophonic recording system is sounded through a simulated 4-channel system or other system from loudspeakers 14 disposed at suitable locations of the reproduction spaces 10 and 12 as shown in FIGS. 2 and 3.
The sound system used with the prior art video system requires post-production of sound, i.e., production of sound through the simulated 4-channel system and the like by post-processing of the recorded sound. This results in the problem that synchronization between picture and sound is hard to obtain. Besides, since this post production of sound, including movement of sound image and addition of reverberation, is conducted in a studio in the process of software production, it is extremely difficult to achieve a sufficient presence effect due to difference between the acoustic characteristics of the reproduced sound field and the studio. Furthermore, software production is so difficult due to the necessity for the post-production of sound that there have been very few software products which can be played back using the above mentioned video system.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a method of recording and reproducing video and sound information which has eliminated the above described problems of the prior art technique and is capable of readily synchronizing sound with a picture in a reproduction space and thereby reproducing the video and sound information in the original spaces vividly and faithfully.